A Megamarket to Find a Gem of a New Show By Dermot Horan* 26 As a buyer I am always on the move, with 60-plus meetings during the week, from breakfast to the evening, every half hour. The evenings are taken up attending several drinks parties (which is an art in itself) and then it is a dinner with people you do business with, but crucially in whose company you have a laugh. They are long days and it is good to unwind with pals in the industry. I can, at this stage, be described as a MIPCOM veteran. My first market was in 1994 as head of Children’s Programming at Ireland’s RTÉ, and the following year I went as our head of Acquisitions, and have been working in that capacity ever since, with the added responsibilities of heading up Co-Productions in recent years. Notwithstanding its long tenure as a market, MIPCOM has changed in recent years. When I started in this role, U.S. series were the mainstay of TV schedules worldwide and commanded the biggest fees and generally necessitated negotiating very large packages with the studios. The L.A. Screenings in May was the opportunity to see all of the brandnew U.S. network series pilots. You then had the summer to get in your expressions of interest and by MIPCOM you had the first few weeks’ ratings from the States to judge how these new shows were doing and you could complete a package, which often included both series and movies, new and library. Now, many of the U.S. studios have their own SVoD platforms and many, if not all, of their brand-new shows will go to them exclusively or will have at least a substantial first window on them. Equally, the more traditional crime procedural shows, which can run up to 22 episodes per season, have lost favor with international buyers who are seeking more event-driven serialized series of shorter duration. So, whereas in the past the vast majority of your budget as a buyer would go to the then six U.S. majors, now it is more broadly divided, as you never know where you’ll find a gem of a new show. This has afforded the medium and smaller distributors the chance to generate sales with major broadcasters and platforms. COVID was also a factor, as when the U.S. went into lockdown, buyers sought out content elsewhere. For example, the English-speaking world that includes Australia and New Zealand, and of course my own country, Ireland, started seeing their home-grown series find success all over the world. This appetite has not changed and has increased as the studios preserve their series for their own subscription services. All of this makes MIPCOM even more valuable. In four days you can pretty much seek out every distributor on the planet, and if they are smaller, a short half-hour meeting can be really meaningful. When I started attending, MIPCOM was one of several TV markets, which catered for all genres, together with MIPTV and the now defunct Monte Carlo market. The latter two have morphed, with MIPTV heading to London to accompany the London Screenings and the Monte Carlo market becoming more of a festival later in the year. There are now lots of focused markets aimed at specific sections of the industry: Kidscreen for kids, Realscreen for factual, and Séries Mania and Content London for scripted. So, MIPCOM stands proud as the only megamarket. Pretty much all the world’s distributors are there, with both their sales and acquisitions hats on. And broadcasters and platforms send their acquisitions executives and commissioners there looking to acquire programming and formats. The stands vary from enormous with their own all-day catering to tiny. These are complemented by lots of smaller distributors and producers working from the adjacent cafés. I feel sorry for the latter as the French waiters insist that they purchase a drink every half an hour at pretty exorbitant prices. However, I suppose they are saving on a stand, or even a registration, albeit RX tries to police those not registered who are trying to piggyback on the market. Even though the appetite for long-running new shows has decreased, buyers are also acquiring for their own on-demand BVoD, AVoD, and FAST channels, so the vast libraries of the U.S. studios provide a real opportunity to acquire in volume. Most of these series are very well known to our viewers and have often run on our own linear channels in the past. Whereas on a per-episode basis they probably won’t generate as many streams as a new series, across their several series they will generate volume, which is key for broadcasters where reach is becoming the key factor, rather than a simple overnight rating. With my Co-Production hat on, I am meeting some of the same distributors I buy from together with our head of Drama, David Crean. In this case we are pitching Irish drama projects, which require gap finance. RTÉ has had a rich vein of success recently with hits such as Kin, The Dry, The Gone, Obituary and Smother, and there are some really exciting shows being launched at MIPCOM, like The Walsh Sisters, These Sacred Vows, and Tall Tales. In the main, Irish independent producers are not affiliated or owned by a distributor or studio, so they have the ability to shop around. We find the most compelling way to do this is for the producer and ourselves at RTÉ to meet the distributor together. The producer will of course talk up their show, but we can talk about why we put it into development, how excited we are about the series, how we are going to promote it and how many series we envisage commissioning if it is successful, and this is incredibly useful information when a distributor is considering whether to support a show or not. Of course, MIPCOM has a significant set of seminars with celebrated keynote speakers, and those who attend these tell me they are great and insightful. However, in all my years, the half-hour schedule from dawn to well after dusk has never afforded me the opportunity to attend them. I fly back at the end of the week, and I can tell you that the Aer Lingus plane to Dublin is a much quieter place than on the flight out, as everyone is talked out and exhausted, but generally satisfied that they have met everyone they needed to, have further developed business relationships, and probably done some significant deals. (Continued from Cover) * Dermot Horan is director of Acquisitions & CoProductions at RTÉ, Ireland. VIDEOAGE October 2025 European Buyer's POV: MIPCOM
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